It's been getting me down, too. At least queer adults are finally catching on to the fact that it still forking sucks to be a queer youth (even as it also can be really forking awesome, just like it could be for us)

I feel like over the years I've heard a lot of, "oh, god, I can't even imagine being able to be out in high school/take my girlfriend to prom/have a GSA. Wow, it's just so much better now." from queer adult friends who have no real contact with youth.

No, actually it just sucks in a new and different way. Queer kids are more visible now. That doesn't make them safer, often the opposite.

I have really mixed feelings about the it gets better project, too. I don't know how much having successful, happy gay adults reach out really helps. I know in general that when teenagers are feeling really oppressed and miserable because they're teenagers, telling them adults have it better does not help. I know that's not what anyone is trying to say, but it makes me wonder if we're really talking to kids now, or to our own younger selves. I don't want to diss a good intention, and at least it cuts through isolation, but I'm happy that this project popped up, too. http://makeitbetterproject.org/

I don't even know how much I believe we are making progress, or even ever have, or just that homophobia mutates and takes different forms in different eras, and the ways you are allowed to be queer do, too. I sometimes think the idea that we're making so much progress erases our past joys and our current pain. But I guess the positive spin on that is the hate is always there but so is the love, the community, the activism, the discovery of self and others. There've always been haters and there've always been happy, healthy queer people. We can love and take care of each other, we just have to step up and do it.

No, actually it just sucks in a new and different way. Queer kids are more visible now. That doesn't make them safer, often the opposite.

I have really mixed feelings about the it gets better project, too. I don't know how much having successful, happy gay adults reach out really helps. I know in general that when teenagers are feeling really oppressed and miserable because they're teenagers, telling them adults have it better does not help. I know that's not what anyone is trying to say, but it makes me wonder if we're really talking to kids now, or to our own younger selves. I don't want to diss a good intention, and at least it cuts through isolation, but I'm happy that this project popped up, too. http://makeitbetterproject.org/

I don't even know how much I believe we are making progress, or even ever have, or just that homophobia mutates and takes different forms in different eras, and the ways you are allowed to be queer do, too. I sometimes think the idea that we're making so much progress erases our past joys and our current pain. But I guess the positive spin on that is the hate is always there but so is the love, the community, the activism, the discovery of self and others. There've always been haters and there've always been happy, healthy queer people. We can love and take care of each other, we just have to step up and do it.

I think this is very Mo of me, but I think about this a lot, and also in regards to feminism, specifically third wavers. Yes things are better. But oh my, some things are actually worse. I feel like we've taken progress as empowerment which is not necessarily the same thing. If you are still treated like a second class citizen (and in the country if you are queer, you are treated as a second class citizen in my opinion), then you are not empowered. If you make less than your male counterpart because you are a woman, you are not empowered. We make gains, yes, but at the same time the opposition changes and changes their battle lines.I do feel like we fight in a nicer way now, if that makes sense. In one of the old DTWOF strips Mo talks about wanting to change the system and instead getting changed by the system. That is how I feel. Our rage got channeled into a different sort of battle and it isn't quite the battle I want to fight.Maybe I am just old and depressed. I just feel very disassociated with activist movements, politics and life at the moment.

i love mo. i can be very mo sometimes. i think that yes some things have gotten better but to say that everything is great just because some things are less bad, and to act like nothing else needs to get better because some progress has been made, makes things worse.

It is very Mo. Thinking about Mo and madwimmin books. What we lose when we convince ourselves things are better in the larger world--our own spaces, our own understanding of reality, being able to still acknowledge oppression, being able to create community. And of course Mo is Cassandra.